“Never mind, my Lord—never mind!” muttered Mr. Meeson after that somewhat pompous but amiable nobleman’s retreating form. “We’ll see if I can’t come square with you. I’m a dog who can pull a string or two in the English press, I am! Those who have the money and have got a hold of people, so that they must write what they tell them, ain’t people to be cut by any Colonial Governor, my Lord!” And in his anger he fairly shook his fist at the unconscious Peer. “Seem to be a little out of temper, Mr. Meeson,” said a voice at his elbow, the owner of which was a big young man with hard but kindly features and a large moustache. “What has the Governor been doing to you?” “Doing, Mr. Tombey? He’s been cutting me, that’s all—me, Meeson!—cutting me as dead as offal, or something like it. I held out my hand and he looked right over it, and marched by.” “Ah!” said Mr. Tombey, who was a wealthy New Zealand landowner; “and now, why do you suppose he did that?” “Why? I’ll tell you why. It’s all about that girl.” “Miss Smithers, do you mean?” said Tombey the big, with a curious flash of his deep-set eyes. “Yes, Miss Smithers. She wrote a book, and I bought the book for fifty pounds, and stuck a clause in that she should give me the right to publish anything she wrote for five years at a price—a common sort of thing enough in one way and another, when you are dealing with some idiot who don’t know any better. Well, as it happened this book sold like wild-fire; and, in time the young lady comes to me and wants more money, wants to get out of the hanging clause in the agreement, wants everything, like a female Oliver Twist; and when I say, ‘No, you don’t,’ loses her temper, and makes a scene. And it turns out that what she wanted the money for was to take a sick sister, or cousin, or aunt, or someone, out of England; and when she could not do it, and the relation died, then she emigrates, and goes and tells the people on board ship that it is all my fault.” “And I suppose that that is a conclusion that you do not feel drawn to, Mr. Meeson?” “No Tombey, I don’t. Business is business; and if I happen to have got to windward of the young woman, why, so much the better for me. She’s getting her experience, that’s all; and she ain’t the first, and won’t be the last. But if she goes saying much more about me, I go for her for slander, that’s sure.” “On the legal ground that the greater the truth, the greater the libel, I presume?” “Confound her!” went on Meeson, without noticing his remark, and contracting his heavy eyebrows, “there’s no end to the trouble she has brought on me. I quarrelled with my nephew about her, and now she’s dragging my name through the dirt here, and I’ll bet the story will go all over New Zealand and Australia.”